


surface tension

by nevergreen



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25952758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevergreen/pseuds/nevergreen
Summary: The bomb is not scary, it just exists.///A short piece taking place after 707 has encountered Saeran in MC's apartment and decided to stay.
Relationships: 707 | Choi Luciel/Main Character
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	surface tension

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemon_demon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemon_demon/gifts).



> at this point i just might or might not gift him every single work of mine bc he deserves it for inspiring me so much

After three hours the time stretches like a syrupy sweet raspberry gum. After five hours it feels like one continuous hour, never-ending and heavy. After seven hours the time no longer exists.

It’s evening now, and the sun hides down the clean wet roofs. Some of them have these tiny, well-groomed gardens with bright fake flowers and blue grass mats. It’s dark now, and she can’t see much, but there was a couple of cats at some point before - grooming each other and purring so loud she could almost hear it through new thick glass. She wonders if they would run away knowing there’s a bomb next to them. She isn’t sure if she would run away herself. 

She snuggles on the bed and thinks about the bomb. How can someone be afraid of something so abstract? It was scary when Luciel’s brother broke the window and hurled inside, thin, sharp, and fast, and glass under his foot squeaked like it was alive. It was scary when she bit him – his skin, salty and pungent, and soft – and rushed into Luciel’s arms, waiting for the bullet, for the knife, for the piece of glass between her shoulder blades, anything. The man, sitting in the corner of her room, hunched under his black-yellow jacket, face colorless in the sick green screen light, fingers are thin and restless – he’s way scarier than it all combined.

The bomb is not scary, it just exists. 

She slips off the bed and steps on the cold, hard floor. Luciel should have left the thermostat on, she thinks.

His laptop is scarred and heavy, with non-existent coating on a keyboard, rough at the edges. There’s a board next to it, connected with a thick wire, snarling at her with two lines of clean copper teeth, and a grey box, whirring his fans steadily. He knows what is that. She spent an entire weekend searching “hacking equipment” on Naver in a pitiful attempt to understand what he does for living. God help her if she understands anything other than he’s smarter than anyone she met. 

She looks at him over the bed. His eyes are wet and lips are the sickest pale, his hair is bleak brown, almost as if all his life, his blood and color left him and seeped into the floor; shadows grow bigger as they approach him. Seven is dead, Luciel has killed him and took his rightful place. She wants to tell him that she knows. Everything she knows. A grey box is a power unit designed to repeat monotonous actions effectively. She mutters it under her breath and she feels like the bomb herself, ready to detonate from the slightest movement. Luciel doesn’t move. He must know something.

She takes her phone and goes to the kitchen, walking slowly and carefully. Her feet are already too cold but she doesn’t mind. 

The kitchen is just as bland, plain and white as the rest of the apartment. She can’t recall even eating here, not a single time.  
The phone comes to life with a single feeble tinkle. Yoosung says sorry. She has no idea why. She doesn’t answer. It feels like there’s no before, so why would he feel sorry? She puts the phone on the counter, screen down, so she won’t see a flickering dot that pleads her to come.  
For some reason, she feels like as if they need her, as if there might be a disaster if she doesn’t come online and this feeling is terrifying, it stings through her, so fierce that she drops a box of cereal that she was holding and lets out a faint whimper. 

The next thing that she hears is a rustling sound of someone throwing clothes on the floor. She freezes at the place and waits, and the waiting is endless and viscous, so she kneels and picks up the box, warily and carefully.  
No one comes, and she unpacks the box quickly and empties half of it before realization of how hungry she was kicks in. The grape juice she finds in the fridge is sour and sweet, and it’s too much of a taste, too much for this kitchen, white and clean and lifeless. Rika must have eaten only cereals and bland microwave meals, she thinks, nothing else is allowed here. She is not allowed here too. The bomb was designed to take care of it. 

She closes her eyes and pictures Luciel’s face, streaked across with fear and guilt, and something else, stronger, more vibrant, and powerful than everything she ever saw before. His eyes are alive and golden; he catches her mid-air as she dashes to him. She blinks, and everything’s the same, only there are two faces now, and one merges with another way too well.

When she’s back in the room, it feels like it’s much colder than before. Luciel’s jacket is on the floor, curled around him as if he tried to rush somewhere; he sits in a black tank top, tapping on the keyboard mercilessly - way too loud to be actually efficient, and she approaches him slowly. He might snap at her, she thinks calmly, he did before. As if she didn’t forgive him well in advance. For all that Luciel has said and done, he is still here. 

"You need to eat something", she says softly. Without his jacket, he’s all sharp and swords, but when he looks at her, his face is tired and filled to the brims with sorrow. He parts his lips and breathes in, then breathes out, slowly and steadily, and she reads his face like a shabby leaflet of nearby food delivery. 

"Don’t talk to me", Luciel says, and it sounds as blank as usual, but there’s something new, an apologetic narrative; his voice is low and cracks at the last word. "If you’re hungry, go eat by yourself, and if you have eaten, then go to sleep and stop bothering me". 

_Okay_ , she mouths and turns to the bed. She doesn’t want to sleep, does she? Maybe they’re still stuck in that hour when she screams that she loves him at the top of her lungs, and he is heartbroken to see his brother, but her face is hidden in the crook of his shoulder and it mends his heart again, slowly, but steadily.  
Maybe she’s still asleep and it’s three minutes more. The bed is so cold she can’t help but curl up in a ball. The cats are nowhere to be seen. The time is pointless. He’s not.

When her breath becomes slow and rhythmic, Luciel stands up. One of his legs fails him a bit, and he leans to rub sore muscles with his knuckles. The jacket he picks from the floor is cold too, so he slips in it once again and waits until the warmth from his body seeps in. 

The bed is so big, and she’s lying here by its edge, oblivious and senseless, her face turned to the window; Luciel takes his jacket off and kneels before her. When he covers her with it, she mewls in her sleep.

For a moment he’s so tempted to lie down, to hide his head in her arms that it’s hard for him to let go of his jacket. When he does, his face thins even more. He doesn’t stay there for long, let along touch her. 

Luciel turns and faces the moon outside, and whispers: _good night, good night, you two_.  
The next morning she wakes up crying and she doesn’t know why.


End file.
